


Head to Toe

by scrapbullet



Series: Born To [7]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst and Feels, Asshole Thranduil, Gen, M/M, Non-Graphic Cesarean Section, Suicidal Thoughts, however brief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:25:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2842931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrapbullet/pseuds/scrapbullet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back and forth, Bard paces, but still the contractions do not come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head to Toe

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to all who've read my angsty little crack series; have a very pleasant festive season, however you may celebrate it <3

The pain that enfolds him beggars belief. It is nothing like the contractions he'd had with Sigrid - or even sweet Bain, who was such a small babe in comparison to his squalling, blood slick sister, had barely uttered a peep when cut from Bard's heaving belly - and a knot deep within him twists in panic at the thought that something _isn't quite right_. It hangs over him like a storm cloud as his children's' stoic tutor takes them by the hand to lead them away, their fear almost as palpable as his own.

Back and forth, Bard paces, but still the contractions do not come. He frets even as Thranduil himself enters the solar, a scent-trail of pheromones following in his wake. Such a thing awakens the beast in Bard - _nothing more than brood mare for a desolate King of a dying wood, but by the gods when he spreads his legs the animal in him keens with want_ \- and he eases, soothed regardless, as the healers enter to prod and probe and pull him asunder.

With Thranduil's palm a heavy weight over his closed eyes, Bard loses himself to the maelstrom within. His child does not want to be born to this life, he knows, of hiding in the shadows. It does not want a distant, royal father nor the shame of a bastard's existence and for the briefest moment the bargeman is _sure, so very sure-_

_(-but who will look after his children, then? Who will wipe their red noses, kiss their hurts, teach them right from wrong? Who will do those things and more if he is dead and gone, buried in the damp and rotten soil of his mate's kingdom?)_

Breath heaves out of him, even as the chill that gradually works its way from the tips of his fingers to the quickening beat of his heart is melted by the growing light of the Eldar. 

He knows this warmth. He covets it, almost, for it is like sunlight on his face when he has gone so long without feeling its heat upon him fully; secreted away from sight with the shade of towering trees. It enters his very pores and seeps inside, and for a time the pain is nothing for there is only _peace_ -

( _In truth, the healers fear for his life. There is too much blood and the babe does not cry as they cut her from the body of her bearer, and Thranduil is ashen-faced as they quarrel over whom is their primary patient - the man, pale and hanging on by a thread, or the child, breathing short and shallow and quickly turning blue._

 _As in all things it is the King who decides, who extends his will onto her; his newborn daughter who shudders as his light rouses the Song within her spirit, sucking in air as the healers rub her chest and back in a desperate bid to prolong her life._ )

The first thing Bard glimpses when he awakens is the face of his newborn daughter, her ears curved in a delicate point.


End file.
